6 Basic Racing Principles for Faster Lap Times

Learn Weight Management

Expert-level car control starts with a mastery of weight transfer. Cars like the Cayman are extremely sensitive to rotation compared to the 911 so understanding how things move around is a critical step in getting faster. Your awareness of weight transfer on different turns of a race track will improve with repetition.

Understand Traction

Tires can quite literally make or break your 911. OEM equipment should be the baseline for grip with tires like the RE71R being the recommended minimum in Summer climates. Rear engine cars need mechanical grip to inspire driver confidence so don’t skip out when it comes to this aspect of your build. One of the keys to advanced driving is to keep a properly set up machine and tires are a huge contributor to that.

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Trail Brake At Your Own Risk

On autocross courses where speeds are low and hairpins are tight, you can actually benefit from trail braking and getting the back end of the car stepping out, but this technique should be kept to slow corners. When speeds start increasing trail braking can become quite alarming in a 911. Always brake in a straight line with these rear engine machines. There's always a risk of sliding on the brakes and smashing into a wall.

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Work on Loading the Car

As you go through a constant radius corner and increase speed you will hopefully be approaching the limit gradually. Eventually, the advanced driving technique is to get up to this limit as quickly as possible without stepping over it. Easier said than done—especially on cold tires. Advanced drivers can feel where the limit is by using an innate feel of when the car is near it. It’s all about learning what G-loads feel like which is why your equipment must stay so consistent.

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Roll Into the Corners

Many intermediate drivers who can cut great lap times are still guilty of steering too abruptly. This will cause the driver to have to correct the angle of the car. In the industry, we call this action “chopping wood” or “seesawing” the wheel. Turn in should be like rolling the wheel as little you need to to make the corner. Anything more and you will be upsetting the chassis and costing time.

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Use The Whole Whole Road

Lots of drivers know that they need to use the whole circuit but there are hidden parts of circuits you can use that people ignore. A great example of this is the inside curb on turn 10 at Laguna Seca. Using small parts of the track that others don’t can unlock a new level in your lap time by opening up the corners and making them less dramatic. Sometimes the advanced line is much more simple than you think. 

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